Diez B. Roggisch wrote:
You could use import-hooks for importing your code. There was a
python-magazine article a while ago that showed how to use that + a
parser to import seamlessly a DSL.
I will look into this, right now i don't know what import-hooks are nor
if i can use them from embedded python.
Using pyparsing to write a python-grammar on the fly that simply
exchanges the keywords before passing it to the interpreter is also easy.
This could be an easy solution yes... unfortunately this makes other
problems arise... for instance... if i have an IDE that shows the
translated language and i want to debug it step by step... would it be
easy for me to map the english version (the one that python sees) with
the translated version? I still have to look at this and how to run the
debugger from the application that is "hosting" python so for now the
answer is "i don't know".
Right now, by simply changing the file Python-3.1.1/Grammar/Grammar i
could obtain this (with "if" translated in "se"):
Python 3.1.1 (r311:74480, Feb 25 2010, 22:44:50)
[GCC 4.3.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> Vero = True
>>> stampa = print
>>>
>>> se Vero:
... stampa("Ciao")
...
Ciao
>>>
Which seems to work, but requires to manually change the source code and
it is way too complex for someone that has zero knowledge about the
internals of python (like myself). Besides... it is a very ugly hack IMO.
But to be honest: I doubt it's worth the effort. Really. Teaching people
how to code, but in something that is *not* the "real" language is of
little, if any, benefit.
And also I don't think that your concerns are valid in general. Keywords
are like brandnames or other things - the stand for a concept, and
people immediatly accept them when they want them.
Maybe you are right, but being italian myself i can remember when i was
a middle schooler (no computer before that) and the hours spent on my
MSX figuring out how the thing worked. I learned all the commands as
"brandnames" without really understanding them. I had _no_ idea that
"if" meant... if, or that "print" meant to print. I had zero knowledge
of english and for this reason most of these commands were meaningless
to me, i didn't even suspect they had a meaning in an existing language,
i just thought that was the way computers talked. When several years
later, in High School, i learned English it was a real surprise for me
to find out that the commands i had learned by heart as "magical words"
actually had a precise meaning in "human language" and i think this
would have helped me to figure out several things that instead took
hours or days to understand.
Now kids have internet, they study english from the kindergarten, they
have a huge quantity of manuals and books freely available, so maybe you
are right and i am just over-worrying. But still, i think it would be
nice to use a language familiar to the kid (especially very young ones),
it would make the learning process faster (no need to learn new words)
and it would make the computer feel almost like a virtual "friend".
Much, much, much more important would - if anything - be a
standard-library, or a wrapper for that, e.g. for turtle-graphics, that
was written in terms of your desired language.
I already made some tests with turtle-graphics and it seems to work. My
next problem was to translate the language.
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/3093/zzz5.png
[Btw... i took too much time to write this post so the ladybug fell
asleep...]
Thanx,
Luca
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